Honey Tone Boone's downfall had been accomplished in Memphis immediately subsequent to a Konk'rin' Heroes' parade. There had been some talk about the ownership of the mule which Honey Tone rode. The line of march headed straight for Honey Tone's wife and his potential soul mate and culminated in a ruckus from which Honey Tone emerged, safe in the talons of a policeman. The two women, comparing notes, had gummed up the leader's grand entry to a degree which left Honey Tone thankful for the mule-stealing charge that had landed him safe in the jail and out of the clutches of his wife and Cuspidora Lee. He enjoyed sanctuary in jail for two months and then, threatened with an embarrassing and abrupt release, he concentrated on a hurried mental incubation. Hard pressed, he sought to hatch from the bad egg of circumstance some new enterprise which would take him away, sudden and safe, from where his memorizing wife awaited him. His mind roamed wild through the fields of questionable enterprises opened to him by a combination of easy conscience and the flashy part of a "college" education. On the day of his release he half regretted his education. Ignorance cursed the individual with work, but it left him free of the higher responsibilities and the more acute penalties of transgressions, and just then Honey Tone wished devoutly that he was a field hand. He craved a black complexion instead of the halfway colour that barred him from the unquestioning comradeship of white and black alike. On the night of his release from jail he beat the barrier, and by morning he was well on his way to St. Louis, resolved to explore the Pacific coast for fields wherein his peculiar abilities might enable him to reap the harvest of cash without which life to him was naught. En route West, Honey Tone managed to keep one state ahead of his reputation. Thus he avoided the iron impedimenta which the laws of the land drape around the ankles and feet that stray from the straight and narrow trail--around wrists and hands whose idleness affords the devil welcome opportunity to function as a labour agent. Honey Tone's first week in Oakland found him preaching to a small congregation. On the following Sunday he announced to his flock that subscriptions for a church building fund would be accepted, beginning forthwith. "Temp'rary an' perm'nent." The announcement followed a long prayer during which the uplifter's face wore the same holy expression as that which adorns the first stages of a sneeze. "Rev'und" Honey Tone Boone opened his eyes and tamed his vocabulary to the vernacular current among his hearers. "Temp'rary an' perm'nent. Weekly refun's on all temp'rary subscriptions, togetheh with int'res' at a hund'ed per cent. You doubles yo' 'vestment, like de boy wid de ten talents." The dangling bait was presently engulfed.